You’ve got to give Rob Reiner credit for knowing and acknowledging that he’s mellowing out as he gets older.

As an actor in his 20s in the 1970s, playing Archie Bunker’s mouthy son-in-law Michael (a.k.a. Meathead) in the groundbreaking TV series All in the Family, he spoke for a smarter younger generation with his snappy ripostes to Archie’s racism, intolerance and warmongering.

No less a figure than then-U.S president Richard Nixon considered Reiner’s “hippie” character an affront to decent Americans, as heard in a recently declassified White House recording laced with anti-Semitic and anti-gay remarks.

When Reiner began directing movies in his 30s and 40s in the 1980s and early ’90s, he dissolved Hollywood formula with fresh takes on rom-coms (The Sure Thing, When Harry Met Sally . . .), rock mockumentaries (This Is Spinal Tap), fantasy adventures (The Princess Bride) and thrillers (Misery).

For much of the 21st century, however, Reiner has seemed to be on autopilot. He erratically makes unchallenging popcorn features like grumpy buddies pic The Bucket List and new senior rom-com And So It Goes that have no higher purpose than to get a few smiles from older audiences, many of whom will nod off watching the DVDs on their rec-room TVs.

The proverbial fire in the belly just isn’t there anymore for Reiner, in movie terms at least. He’s still gets fired up and active over real-life issues of rights for gays and non-smokers, and protecting the environment.

But at age 67, he knows that artistically he’s a much mellower guy — and he’s honest enough to fess up to it.

“There’s no question about it,” he says down the line from L.A.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t still have the passion for the things that we care about, but I think that we go about them in ways that are not spinning our wheels as much. You’re not flailing around trying to get things done.

“You go at it in a more measured, knowledgeable way. You get the lay of the land and you know what to do in order to make something work. I’ve done that now with my film work and also with stuff I’ve done politically. I look to see where there’s the opening and where can I actually get something done and make a difference, and not just run around and yell at the rain or scream at the wind.”

Reiner seems to be having more fun returning to acting, which he’s been doing more of late. He makes himself the butt of jokes in his cameo bits in And So It Goes, and last year he attracted great notices as Leonardo DiCaprio’s excitable dad Max in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.

“I’ll do anything for a laugh. I’ll drop my drawers. I love acting, it’s fun. I don’t really love to act in movies that I direct because it’s kind of confusing, but if it’s somebody else, like with Martin Scorsese, like I did with The Wolf of Wall Street, that was fun because it’s somebody else who has all the headaches.”

Avoiding headaches is definitely Reiner’s game plan now, but he’s got plenty on his mind about life, Nixon and Spinal Tap:

It seems you had fun making And So It Goes.

I did, I had fun. I got to work with two great iconic Academy Award-winning actors, one of whom I’ve worked with before, Michael Douglas (The American President), whom I love. He’s a really good friend and I enjoy it. And Diane Keaton, who I had never worked with before, but I had known her a long time. I had a great time with her because she works exactly the way I do. She told me right before we started shooting, “I don’t act, I just am. This is who I am.” And I found that to be true. There was no division between how she is off screen and how she is onscreen and that’s exactly the way I work. I work improvisationally, so that was a lot of fun.

I saw a story somewhere saying that you wanted to make this movie for older baby boomers, who you felt aren’t being fully served by the movies. Is this true?

I don’t think I wanted to make it specifically for that reason but I certainly wanted to make it because it’s what I experience in my life now. If you have a limited time on the planet and you have to embrace all the time you have because you don’t get a second chance, so to turn your back on life or love at this point is really not a good thing to be doing so I wanted to do this. The whole idea started with The Bucket List. The press asked us, “What’s on your bucket list?” and whenever they asked Jack (Nicholson) that he said, “One more great romance!” And I thought, gee, that’s an idea for a movie. People who have basically shot down or turned their back on the idea of love are reconnected through finding each other and I thought that’s a story that I think a lot of people, certainly our age and even a little younger, would understand.

Wouldn’t the Rob Reiner of 30 years ago have made this a much more sarcastic movie?

I might have, but I wouldn’t have even known to make a movie like this. It wouldn’t have resonated with me. I would have just said, “Well, I don’t know what people who are in their 60s, what they think about or what they care about.” You have to live to that point to understand what it is, or what people in that stage of life are thinking and going through.

Did you learn anything from working with Martin Scorsese?

I did learn a lot. I’ve obviously been a huge fan like everybody has of his work over the years. And I always notice that most of his films are not only character-driven, but there really isn’t any story. Basically the characters are the story and when I watched how he worked on this, and this is no different, The Wolf of Wall Street is just about this character, about this Jordan Belfort; there’s no story about the beginning, middle and end. The guy is just an excessive guy who drinks, drugs, sex, money — and then he winds up in jail. But because the characters are the story, he really lets the actors improvise and mine every aspect of the character so he brings out as much as he can so that you do get drawn in and you do get engaged. You’re not worried or consumed by normal story structure. I think it’s gutsy on his part because it’s like working without a net. He’s able to pull it off and I see how he does it. He lets the actors be and he lets them just go and have at the character.

A couple of years ago, the White House released the Watergate-era tapes in which Richard Nixon just tees off on you and All in the Family. You must have been proud.

Well, yeah. I mean I kind of knew about that. He hated my character in All in the Family and I think he was talking about an episode where we dealt with homosexuality. Archie’s friend was a football player who turns out to be a homosexual and my friend, whom everybody called Tweety Pie or Tweety Bird Roger, he was straight. So Nixon was like, “I can’t believe they’re putting this kind of stuff on television!” Well, we’ve come a long way since then.

Did you know that Nixon had this much animosity toward you?

I didn’t know he had animosity specifically toward me. I do know he had animosity toward people who were against the war, the protesters and so on, so I knew he was against my ilk, for sure.

As a former rock critic, I have to ask you about This Is Spinal Tap, the rock band mockumentary that every musician loves. You must feel like Robert Plant, who is always being asked about Led Zeppelin.

I don’t mind talking about Spinal Tap. As a matter of fact I’ll give you a bit of new information you may not have. This is the biggest kick I’ve gotten. You know the Tesla, the car? Elon Musk, who created it and invented it, is a friend, a guy I know. When the first Tesla came out, he told me he wanted to show me something. He takes me in the car and he shows me that you turn the volume up on the Tesla and it goes to 11 and the air-conditioning goes to 11. I got such a kick out of that. Years ago when I was doing The Princess Bride, Sting came in to read for a part or to meet for a part. He said, “You know when we tour around, we watch Spinal Tap. I’ve seen this movie 50 times!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

FAB FOUR FESTIVITIES: It’s Beatles night July 31 at the Revue Cinema, which is celebrating the 50th anniversary next month of the release of A Hard Day’s Night, the band’s first film. The 7 p.m. event will include a screening of the newly restored film and a talk by author and scholar Mark Lewisohn, considered the world’s foremost expert on the Fab Four. Tickets are $10, available in advance through www.revuecinema.ca

Follow on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm

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